The Way Is Shut (For The Dead Keep It)
by Jedi Buttercup
Summary: Illyria stood atop the former Wolfram and Hart building in downtown Washington DC and listened to the unmusical groans of the city's remaining inhabitants thronging the streets below her.


**Title** : The Way Is Shut (For The Dead Keep It)

 **Author** : Jedi Buttercup

 **Disclaimer** : The words are mine; the worlds are not

 **Rating** : T/PG-13

 **Summary** : Angel/Walking Dead. _Illyria stood atop the former Wolfram and Hart building in downtown Washington DC and listened to the unmusical groans of the city's remaining inhabitants thronging the streets below her._ 1200 words.

 **Spoilers** : Post-series for Angel; ambiguous timeline for TWD

 **Notes** : For avamclean, for the prompt, "Illyria + The Walking Dead. This world was no more brutal than any other she'd walked in her long life, but still she found it disconcerting. (I just want her thoughts on this kind of apocalypse. I mean are those left for her to rule worthy of her reign?)" Originally posted elsewhere Dec 5.

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Illyria stood atop the former Wolfram and Hart building in downtown Washington DC and listened to the unmusical groans of the city's remaining inhabitants thronging the streets below her.

Lorne would have disapproved of the comparison, even though it had been expressed in the negative. But the clarity of the Pylean's voice had drawn the infected to him early on, and lesser demons such as he were as susceptible to the disease as the humans. Only those already dead had proven invulnerable to the constructed pathogen: it could not take root in flesh that had already been corrupted. Vampires; mummies; ghouls; humans who had perished and been resurrected; such were among those numbered outside its compass. Every other living, sapient being to crawl the Earth had either become as those currently assaulting her ears... or only waited to do so.

She had once called vampires the ooze that ate itself. Only now did she perceive the true irony of her words. But then, this 'zombie apocalypse' seemed to have been constructed purely to teach her the definition of the word, now that the only one who had truly cared what would become of her was gone.

Perhaps it was best that Wesley had not lived to see this day. In truth, it was no more brutal than any other world she'd walked in her long life, but still, she found it disconcerting. And to see such eyes- marbled over with death and the curse the Wolf, Ram and Hart had created of the vector organism that had once filled her coffin- in the face of her reluctant guide would have fractured what little purpose remained to her.

A light, far off, flickered briefly into existence: the wavering light of an open flame. Illyria considered it, studying the terrain, then marked where it had been when it vanished from view once more. Wesley's other deceased paramour, the woman called Lilah Morgan, had become the chief executive of the Earth branch of Wolfram and Hart when the former Senior Partners had realized what they'd wrought and fled; she had spent many months gathering those resources left to the firm and purposed herself in using them to build a small haven of survivors. She was always interested in new faces; where they had come from, where they were going.

Should they survive long enough for Illyria to find them, she might even procure the answers. Few of those yet living had any more morals than a hurricane, in bitter echo of Illyria's long-ago advice to Angel. Fewer yet had the power to make any more of their ambitions than mere voices cast into the wind. Most of the rest killed or were killed, over resources or unkindnesses or no reason at all, feeding the growing army of the infected one way or the other. Mere vermin, unworthy of her reign- if the alliance she had entered into with Lilah to pursue both their goals could in any significant way be considered 'her reign'.

She crouched, then leaped over the edge of the roof; she had recovered enough of her power for such a small reinforcement of her form, and the brief moments in which the bonds of gravity released her were nearly the only time she felt free from the circumscribed existence to which she was bound. Concrete shattered under her feet as she impacted the sidewalk; one infected, struck in the shoulder by her passage, sprawled in crippling injury beneath her, uncaring. Illyria felt the sparks of kin-not-kin all around her flutter at her appearance... then judge her one of them and ignore her to cluster closer around the moans of the fallen one.

They had been intended as vessels, these victims of disease, back in their beginnings. Wolfram and Hart had rebuilt yet again after the destruction of the Circle of the Black Thorn and, taking counsel of those who believed the balance had been disrupted by the actions of Angel and the Slayers, decided to implement a project the Powers That Be would otherwise have made every effort to quash. They had examined the remnants of the 'mummy dust' in Illyria's sarcophagus to determine how it recreated and reequipped a host- first burning the body in the fires of conversion; then burning the soul to seal its state and empty it as a receptacle- and decided to create new vessels of their own.

But Illyria's power had ever been a jealous power; and somewhere along the way, someone had miscalculated. The bodies would not hold their preserved state, once burned, freeing the soul; and the animated bodies would accept no possession but _hers_. And so, believing their experiment a failure, their scientists had let containment procedures relax. Had she had enough power left to claim the first corpses to swarm Los Angeles, to live several lives at once the way she had long ago, it might have ended there, with the scourge turned back upon its creators. But her original reservoir of power had been vented by Wesley's Mutari generator, and so few worshippers remained to her that she had not then regained even enough strength to hear the song of the green.

She had more, these days; every survivor to join Lilah's camp prayed to her without fail. She provided them evidence that their prayers were not for naught; more worshippers were brought to add to their number; the area under their control expanded; and more survivors were found, in an ever-expanding cycle. One day soon, enough power would accrue for her to test Lilah's theory with a small number of the affected; when it worked, the cycle would accelerate, until she could animate entire armies at once.

Then, and only then, would she be able to fulfill her final promise to Wesley. To return in kind every blow, every sting their adversaries had given her; to shred them and pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. To finally make trophies of their spines.

It was as likely that they would fail as that they should succeed. Angel had not survived the night the Circle of the Black Thorn had perished, and her pet had left her side months before on a quest to set up 'plan B' and hopefully find his Slayer along the way. Their other friends were long gone, fallen in the early stages of the apocalypse. It was all one to her whether they succeeded in their aim, or whether Spike would be called upon to try the retrieval spell in the Deeper Well once more- the one designed to drag every trace of Illyria to it, through every body that stood between those sparks and the place of her imprisonment, scorching all that remained of humanity to the ground along the way. Denying Wolfram and Hart its pyrrhic victory in the only other way left open to them.

To utterly die or conquer all; such were their choices. Illyria found them fitting- for in both cases, Wolfram and Hart would lose.

She pushed her way through the crowd of infected drawn to the noise of her fall, then strode toward the place where the light had glimmered.

-x-


End file.
